‘If Sanders’ insistence on moving past identity politics is the next step in his revolution, may it suffer even more defeat than it did in the primary.’
Photograph: Larry Marano/Rex/Shutterstock

It appears that in the aftermath of a monumental but nonetheless failed presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders remains most comfortable in the spot that made him a loser: trying to separate class and race.

Sanders has never been wrong about the damaging roles establishment politics and economics play in the lives of millions of Americans. Even so, he’s long struggled with acknowledging that focusing on class alone won’t make this country better for many who are struggling. That the revolution cannot be colorblind if it were to truly make this country better for all of the disenfranchised.

At a speech in Boston on Sunday, the Vermont senator advocated “go[ing] beyond identity politics,” declaring, “The working class of this country is being decimated — that’s why Donald Trump won. And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down.”

Yes, it has. But Sanders, like the others parading this pedestrian punditry in the aftermath of the news that most white people voted for Donald Trump, is missing the point while continuing to promote the very ideas that sunk him during the primary. He lost many potential voters of color because we know color-blind economic policies alone will not change certain realities of racism in America. They might “make America great again”, but only for people who have always had it pretty good.

In October, when asked in a New Republic profile how uncomfortable he appeared talking about race, he answered, “OK, see, this is an issue I’m not really – what I don’t want to do is get into me.” When told that it wasn’t about him per se, Sanders said, “It’s a complicated answer. It’s a good question, but I prefer not to get into it right now.”

Though Sanders did make some efforts toward minority outreach eventually, it was too late and not good enough. After all this time, that reality has still failed to reach him.

In his Boston speech, he demonstrated this blind spot yet again, when a woman in the audience asked asked Sanders how she could become the second-ever Latina senator.

“It is not good enough for somebody to say, ‘I’m a woman, vote for me,’” Sanders explained. “No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry. In other words, one of the struggles that you’re going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics.”

Why should we pretend “identity politics” hasn’t always been America’s way – that discounting them invalidates the lived experience of the very people that opted against sending him to the general election?

When Bernie Sanders talks about the Democratic party’s failure to reach working-class white voters, he manages to somehow forget he lost to a woman who bested him partly because she spoke of the need of criminal justice reform and the overall role racism plays in America before he did.

Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton went on to lose to a demagogue who promised to restore the nation to an image that excluded Americans like me and like the woman who dreams of becoming a US senator.

Bernie Sanders owed that woman a better answer. He should have mentioned the need to combat voter suppression. He should have mentioned how identity politics matter because one’s identity in this country can very much play into economic status. Instead, Sanders went to what makes him comfortable rather than address reality.

Trump voters proved they were more willing to let a con man break the country than share it with the rest of us. The failure of Democrats wasn’t that they didn’t coddle white working-class people enough; it was that they failed to explain how unless you are wealthy, white and connected like Trump, you will fall like every other person he’s screwed over throughout his career. That a multicultural coalition rooted in economic plurality for all benefits everyone most.

If Sanders’ insistence on moving past “identity politics” is the next step in his revolution, may it suffer even more defeat than it did in the primary.